Letter from the Head of Secondary - 23rd June 2016

Despite the inclement weather, the hugely diverse range of Learning Beyond the Classroom Activities have been a great success this week.

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All students in Years 7 – 10 spent one day participating in the Amazing Race – a challenge of reasoning, navigation and orientation around the centre of Shanghai, and students and teachers alike have come back exhausted, but full of tales to tell.

Years 8 and 9 each spent a day inventing a new country, including devising a language, a national anthem, a flag, national foods, symbols and even education systems!

Years 7 and 10 both enjoyed a day of film-making, involving planning, scriptwriting, directing, editing and producing a short film – maybe we have some budding Hollywood directors amongst us?!

Year 7 also dipped their toes into journalism during their ‘Everybody Writes’ day, where they started to understand the pitfalls and challenges that journalism offers, whilst creating their very own newspapers.

Year 8’s excursion to Century Park was curtailed by the rain, but they returned to school to complete their mathematical challenges under the watchful eyes of the maths team and other numerically-minded staff.

Year 9 enjoyed a day of organising a festival, where they learnt how to respond to last minute changes of plan as stars dropped out or prima donna’s refused to work with other artists – testing their logistics and planning skills to the limit!

Year 10 had previously been set an entrepreneurial challenge to pitch a business idea to a panel, to develop a product or service that would contribute positively to the refugee crisis in Europe – and some fantastic ideas they had too!

Meanwhile, having finished their exams last week, and spent Friday evening celebrating at their excellent end of IGCSE party on the Bund (with a stunning view of the Pudong skyline!), Year 11 students were back in school. They spent three days learning all about what the IB programme has to offer, including undertaking an ‘egg drop challenge’, taking a trip to the Art district to kick off their theory of knowledge studies, and joining the Year 12 students for their first IB assembly.

Finally, last but not least, Year 12 spent three very fruitful days working on their Extended Essays, their Theory of Knowledge presentations and their Higher Education applications, as well as joining the Year 11 students for the egg challenge and the assembly.

As I write, a revised version of Sports Day is taking place due to the continued rain, which nevertheless appears to have been an exciting, energetic and highly competitive day.